Posted
by
timothyon Tuesday May 20, 2014 @08:44AM
from the at-last-a-proper-home dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The controversial TSA backscatter X-ray machines are being sent to prisons. According to Federal times, 'The controversial airport screening machines that angered privacy advocates and members of Congress for its revealing images are finding new homes in state and local prisons across the country, according to the Transportation Security Administration.' 154 backscatter X-rays have already ended up in Iowa, Louisiana, and Virginia prisons. TSA is working to find homes for the remaining machines. Per the article: '"TSA and the vendor are working with other government agencies interested in receiving the units for their security mission needs and for use in a different environment," TSA spokesman Ross Feinstein said.'"

Not true at all. If a prisoner sues the prison believing the machines to be unsafe, the prisoner is more likely to get a fair hearing and the prison unlikely to to get away with glossing over health and safety issues related to the machines....whereas the TSA had the carte blanche in the name of Fatherland Security!

Not true at all. If a prisoner sues the prison believing the machines to be unsafe, the prisoner is more likely to get a fair hearing and the prison unlikely to to get away with glossing over health and safety issues related to the machines....whereas the TSA had the carte blanche in the name of Fatherland Security!

Right. Because being a prisoner guarantees one's rights, access to legal counsel, timely medical care, and protection from being violently abused...

well now, I never actually said any of that....I said more likely to get a fair hearing and the prison would be less likely to get away with falling back on "national security" bullshit. The rest is obviously not true.

I can't deny this; it is exactly what I understood. However, can you really say that the situation presents a fair opportunity for a person to make an informed decision? I mean, you likely know that the TSA lied about certifications on the machines, (so much that it prompted NIST to release a statement that they do not even do the kind of safety certification the TSA was claiming to have gotten). You may be aware of the John's Hopkins study claiming these devices are not even safe to be around.

Not
- security of your personal well being
- privacy
- respect to the human
- torture (psychological or physical)
- physical punishment.

The punishment is withdrawing freedom, not becoming a sub-human. Once you leave prison, you should be considered a typical citizen again -- you served your sentence, so it must not carry on forever.

That said, punishment is known to not be efficient, and not a deterrent for others (as most crimes are not driven by thinking long about the consequences). So modern prisons focus on re-constituting the citizen to full capacity. Because it works better than punishing.

It is utterly hilarious that you would mock systems of retributive justice in (apparent) favor of ones of clinical rehabilitation-- considering just how Orwellian it is to turn the justice system into a clinical one.

Has no one read 1984? Is no one concerned with just how ominous things like a justice system focused on "reconstituting" (or, perhaps, "reeducating?) would be?

The question is interesting tho - clockwork orange showed an example of such treatment too. Any meaningful behavioral therapy will make differences such that you may worry. I guess you have to trust somebody. Not everybody that is trying explicitly to change you is a criminal or worse - an evil asshole from some agency protecting us from something.

True, though you could argue that being locked up with other dangerous criminals, ensuring your security can only be assured by a decrease in privacy (frisking, cell inspections). And once you're a ward of the state, the state assumes a much larger than normal responsibility for your security.

Also, punishment works pretty well to prevent criminals from committing crimes while in jail (sure, not 100%, as others pointed out before). That's not about being hard on crime; it's about applying the most benef

. So modern prisons focus on re-constituting the citizen to full capacity. Because it works better than punishing.

Always relevant in these discussions [angelfire.com]:According to the Humanitarian theory, to punish a man because he deserves it, and as much as he deserves, is mere revenge, and, therefore, barbarous and immoral. It is maintained that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal. When this theory is combined, as frequently happens, with the belief that all crime is more or less pathological, the idea of mending tails off into that of healing or curing and punishment becomes therapeutic. Thus it appears at first sight that we have passed from the harsh and self-righteous notion of giving the wicked their deserts to the charitable and enlightened one of tending the psychologically sick.......

My contention is that this doctrine, merciful though it appears, really means that each one of us, from the moment he breaks the law, is deprived of the rights of a human being.

The reason is this. The Humanitarian theory removes from Punishment the concept of Desert. But the concept of Desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust. I do not here contend that the question ‘Is it deserved?’ is the only one we can reasonably ask about a punishment. We may very properly ask whether it is likely to deter others and to reform the criminal. But neither of these two last questions is a question about justice. There is no sense in talking about a ‘just deterrent’ or a ‘just cure’. We demand of a deterrent not whether it is just but whether it will deter. We demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a ‘case’.

Removal doesn't, by itself imply punishment, at least not punishment appropriate to a particular crime. We could remove criminals from society permanently by hanging them all, even the ones who merely wrote bad checks. We could make all sentences life without possibility of parole, or punish with massive but brief periods of torture where the criminal was not kept from society for more than a few days or so, or various methods that would have no real connection between what crime was committed and the sever

There is always a way around the difficulties. I would imagine that a prison is in itself a terrible thing to be in, no need for torture and some such. There are people there that can be helped in form of taking medication, by showing how to control their anger. There are also others that can be corrected by the fact they have been caught already. There are still others, for whom no amount of correction will help, who see prison term as unfortunate period of time they have to serve and possibly shorten in a

Im arguing that turning criminals into medical patients is a terrible idea that would result in pretty nightmarish systems, whether they looked like 1984 or like Clockwork orange, yes.

At the end of the day I dont see how its appropriate for the state to attempt to "fix" individuals, rather than simply meting out punishment when people violate society's rules. I also dont see how you can avoid a massive moral hazard with the state determining what modes of thought are "normative"; we would end up with a sin

Rather than forcing rehabilitation on prisoners, what about giving them a choice to participate in rehabilitation programs?

I would be less opposed to it, except that A) im pretty certain it would end up mandatory (slippery slopes are real), and B) it seems to undermine a system based on justice if someone can choose to get out of justice.

Im all for providing resources during incarceration to allow people to get their act together, but I dont think its healthy to ever lose sight of the fact that their incarceration is, first and foremost, punitive.

I don't see how punishment is immoral: if as the first paragraph states it is in proportion to the damage of the crime. Not everything is monitary but say someone steals your wallet with $200 in it. If months later cops catch the criminal would it be unreasonable for them to take $200 from the criminals wallet and give it to you even if it isn't the same $200 they took? With emotional/physical damages it is harder to balance things out of course but neither of the alternative reasons are acceptable to me fo

The "fundamental issues leading to imprisonment" are that a free-willed individual broke society's rules.

There are factors that can cause people to go down a bad path, and we should work to address them-- but lets not ever make the mistake of shifting responsibility away from the person who made the choices.

That's what you say. For some people though, prison is partially a substitute for other purposes of natural justice. There is no universally accepted set of requirements that everyone agrees on. Among them, there is 1) prevention of further crimes by removing the criminal from society, 2) offering solace/revenge to the victims, 3) rehabilitating and educating the criminal, etc.

What about the right of the general public to take pleasure and satisfaction in the petty humiliation and dehumanization of incarcerated persons? The cruelty dollar is a huge dollar, not to mention the cruelty vote.

I think your Not list makes sense other than on Privacy. I don't see how we could imprison anyone without the loss of privacy. The very act of locking someone up would seem to involve some type of monitoring (so you know if they are actually locked up) which in turn means they lose some of their privacy (since you know where they are at all times).

'effective' is a problematic term. Specifically, one has to look at the purpose of 'punishment' before one can determine if it is being effective or not, and the goal of punishment has nothing to do with deterrent, it is to please 3rd parties.

When looked in the light of "does it stop/prevent crime", the US prison system makes zero sense.

However, when you look it in the light of "how do we hold people in prison for as long as possible, and ensure they return", it makes perfect sense. The goal of the system is to put people in prison as long as possible.

Look at the stock value of companies in that arena. Not Apple, hockey-stick type of growth, but close enough.

Your talking as if the criminals are the violated ones. How about the crime victims? extremely little is done for them to make them whole for the anguish the scum criminal did to them. I say fuck the prisoner no one forced them to rape,steal,murder. The poor prisoner......fuck the prisoner not only should they do time but half the money they make should go to the victims of there crimes..im not talking about weed sellers or smokers unless they kill or mame someone in a car accident.

It really depends on the crime. Here in the US, an arrest for public intoxication (not a conviction... an arrest) is good enough to get one blacklisted from a lot of jobs (this is a filter mainly, as I've worked with HR departments who say that "you can buy your way out of a conviction, but if a cop decides that they should fill out paperwork on you, you are guilty."

Couple that with a felony being dangerously easy to get. Recently in my neck of the woods, a drunk peeing on a well netted 26 charges of lewd

The general right to privacy is one of the many freedoms withdrawn as a result of criminal conviction. As it should be. As should any freedom which makes it harder for the guards to maintain their own safety or prevent other prisoners from harming you. You're only innocent until *proven* guilty.

The point of prison is to remove those who would harm others from the rest of society and put them somewhere they can't harm the innocent. Punishment doesn't work. Rehabilitation doesn't work. The recidivism rates ba

I'm not sure how correctional correctional facilities are. I think some people will stop doing crime when they get out because they've had a theoretical punishment turn into an actual one they've experienced. A 20 yr old might think: "oh I won't get caught I'm too smart" and even if I do jails have become so easy now that big deal I'll be bored for a few years. But after having actually experienced it, and having things they didn't even think about happening (like loosing family members while in, or having their kids grow up without them etc) they don't want to go through it again. It isn't necessarily that they've been "corrected" from their bad behaviour just their relative weighting of the alternatives have been adjusted: it is no longer worth the time to do the crime.

... But after having actually experienced it, and having things they didn't even think about happening (like loosing family members while in, or having their kids grow up without them etc) they don't want to go through it again.....

But that's not the case with sociopaths or people w/o friends and family. If a criminal on their own in the world gets out of the slammer, what's keeping them from going back in?

Nothing. There will always be broken people where no deterrence matters they just get their rocks off doing whatever crime it is they like. Hopefully the combination of probation/monitoring when they are out and long sentences limits the damage they can do. There is something to be said for old forms of punishment here: if we took a hand for each time you got caught doing armed robbery say you probably wouldn't have much in the way of 3rd time offenders. Could call it cruel and unusual but is it any more cr

Decriminalisation of drugs would also go some way toward slightly less insane levels of incarceration? Having 5% of the population the US account for 25% of the world's prisoners. That is just batshit unhinged.

For a fraction of the cost of the SWAT teams and weaponry, we could give every single American citizen minimum wage, even if they do nothing at all but watch Springer re-runs. That is about $22,000 a year.

This doesn't sound true. American citizens are about 300 million people. Giving them all $22k per year means about 6.6 trillion dollars. Let's me generous and say the "fraction" you allude to is 1/2, then we need 13.2 trillion dollars spent on swat. From what I've read, the total US police expenditure is closer to $100 billion, which is orders of magnitude less.

You *may* be able to "top up" the very poorest US citizens with that kind of budget (though I'm skeptical), and maybe we decide that children do

And yet crime tends to be performed by young men. If the majority of criminals were and will remain sub-human and hence continue to commit crimes, that would not be true. Clearly, a good many young men that commit crimes avoid doing so later in life.

Weren't these machines banned in Europe over health concerns from radiation exposure? I know that these are prisoners but shouldn't the health effects of such a machine be studied prior to deploying stuff like this out into the world? http://science.howstuffworks.c... [howstuffworks.com]

I know that these are prisoners but shouldn't the health effects of such a machine be studied prior to deploying stuff like this out into the world?

What mystifies me is that they (sorta) admitted that the old machines may have been bad for one's health (at least I hear TSA agent say "these are new, safer machines"). However, not a single person had been fined or imprisoned for allowing UNTESTED machines to be used against millions of people.

That's because everything is forgiven if you shout TERRORISM loud enough.

Also, most politicians won't even consider going against the TSA on this because they are too afraid of being called "soft on terrorism" during their next election campaign. Fear isn't just for keeping the populace in line - it keeps the politicians in line also.

cuz it's really hard to prove health problems are caused by radiation, particularly when you have medical studies which come to opposing conclusions. The uncertainty allows the establishment to continue using the machines until more definitive evidence is produced that the scanner manufacturers and government can't controvert.

It damages your corneas quite rapidly.
I saw a poster at the ARVO annual meeting a fortnight ago by a researcher called Masami Kojima. Basically, there's lots of things that emit that wavelength -- your car's radar cruise control being one that I remember -- but that's pretty weak. These scanners... not so weak. It increases the temperature of your corneas as your eyes absorb the radiation; a few degrees can cause a fair bit of damage. You so don't want to be stuck in one, and I'd worry about cumulative exposure if I were a really regular traveler.

It's not power so much as distance. Radiation is subject to inverse-square law, and the closer the emission source and the wider the emitter, the more radiation received by the subject. Since the point of these machines was to invasively scan the entire body it would make sense that it would subject the body to a lot of radiation.

The solution will probably be something as pedestrian as special goggles that the prisoners are given the option to wear, something that looks like those small swim goggles bu

It's the radiation. I'm surprised that correctional employee unions haven't objected to these installations, or, at least, demanded that the scanner operators get to wear dosimeters to detect radiation exposure.

Or to sit in a completely separate room with some dim lighting and mood music with a fellow guard they are comfortable with in intimate situations. These guards deserve the same opportunities for abuse the TSA was afforded. Working on turning otherwise functional members of society into lifelong criminals is as important a task as keeping our airlines free of Tara.

All the security personnel get to see will be the outlines of obese / overweight / fat American inmates, malnourished by a decades-long diet of corn-syrup-based beverages and saturated fatty acids, as the USA underclass is wont to consume. I pity the prisons' security personnel.

The people who would be inconvenienced by a fully nude rendering of their body presented to a remote office worker making minimum wage have objected to said technology. These people are politicians and businessmen, members of the plutocracy in some cases and powerful individuals in other cases. The machines were withdrawn because they were perturbed, not you.

when we say, 'privacy concerns raised by airport passengers do not apply in many cases to prisoners' what we mean is that we reserve the right to treat United States citizens designated as prisoners, or detained by law enforcement while charged with a crime, like human fucking garbage. We categorically embrace the power to bombard those in custody arbitrarily and at our will with ionizing radiation that depicts them nude and has been proven by numerous security experts to be easily thwarted. We endorse the ability to do this with or without their consent because theyve written a bad check, been charged with an unpaid parking ticket, or have a warrant for an unreturned library book.

This is a bigger deal than most readers understand. Namely because America has the highest rate of incarceration in the known world. We arrest and imprison people at or above the height of the Soviet Union, so to conject that the reader would not be subject to this type of technology in the future isnt at all certain. In a "detention facility" or "correctional center" as its known it is implicitly understood that your moral and ethical treatise concerning the dangers and repercusssions of using this technology are tolerated only as long as it takes your corrections officer to apply her riot baton to designated 'departmentally approved areas' of your tender human body.

The systemic repercussions of widespread application of X-Ray backscatter systems in the various private penal colonies of the united states, while financially sound at its salesmans word, certainly isnt a long term bet to hedge. Incidences of debilitating cancers will need medical treatment for both guards and prisoners alike as has been shown in the incidences of cancer for certain groups of TSA screeners. Liability for introducing a prisoner or employee to a cancer suspect agent will likely follow the course of most other folly of american scientific perversion in the hands of government. It will likely be assigned to the government, who in turn will insist it was the technology, and in turn the manufacturer will absolve itself through a complex series of medical puppet shows, out of court settlements, and evasive restructuring practices so as to ensure no real harm comes to the corporation. Once your sentence is complete, and you emerge from prison, the biblical retribution set upon you is now the denial of employment, housing, food stamps, medicare, and finally a malignant cancer risk substantially greater than the rest of society as your corrections system applied background scanners quietly and incessantly for the duration of your incarceration.

This headline sounded at first like it was describing some sort of publicity stunt where the machines themselves were going to be locked up as prisoners for the crimes they have committed against innocent people. I think something like

You can't choose who you live with (that would be 'racist'), so you are a prisoner.

You mean I can't live with Scarlett Johansson? Darn the luck!

You can't simply GET AWAY from people you don't want to associate with (murderers just released from prison, paedophiles just released from prison, gang members, etc.) so you are a prisoner.

There are no violent ex-cons or gang members in my neighborhood or at my place of work...

You aren't entitled to a fair amount of land, from birth, just for being alive, because somebody else STOLE the land from your parents, so you and they have to work as indentured servants in order to just be able to afford a place to live. The 'laws' are made so that you can't build any sort of house you want, even if you did have land - you have to spend a fortune on a house, so you are still a slave - still in prison.

No one born with a hungry mouth is truly innocent.

Let me repeat that, so it sinks in...

No one born with a hungry mouth is truly innocent.

There are only so many resources on this planet. We are all in competition for those resources. Communities, cities, nations, alliances, are all there for the purpose of attempting to ensure the best access to resources. Different cultures throughout history have been better at it than others, and I'm certain that the current balance will eventually change. Within those spheres of cooperation exists a degree of competition though, as cooperation doesn't automatically mean succor. If parents want their children to succeed then they need to set their children up on a path to help make them succeed. That generally requires having a certain degree of stability of their own to start with, and then generally requires the parents to make some sacrifices of their own to commit the time and resources to the children that they might otherwise want to spend on themselves.

My very strong opinion is that if you can't afford to have children, then don't have children. 'Afford' includes the willingness to commit that time, effort, and money required to do right by them. There are so many ways of avoiding having children while still enjoying a full life that it's stupid to have kids when one isn't prepared to go all-in.

Land isn't your birthright. Your birthright, whether born in Beverly Hills or in Khartoum, is to struggle to get or to keep what you need to live. That's it. The universe owes you nothing.

Besides the privacy and safety concerns of these things, I was under the impression that a major flaw is that it's a bit too easy to sneak things through them.

Is it really a smart idea to move these things from a place where security is theatre to a place where the targets actually *are* sneaking weapons through security and using those to actually kill other people?

Meanwhile, in airports they've been replaced by new machines that achieve exactly the same ends using slightly different technology.

But the traveling public has gotten used to it, and complaints have died down, so the new terahertz wave nudie scanners are the new normal.

Maybe in your neck of the woods, but I've done a bit of traveling over the past several months, and my experience is that the TSA agents have a pitch ready and part of that pitch is "This is not backscatter. No danger to you. No nudie pics can be stored. Please don't ask to be pat down. Please!", which I continued to ignore and tell the man "I don't trust your bosses to tell the truth anymore. Grope away".

They've largely replaced the X-Ray backscatter machines with millimeter wave scanners [wikipedia.org], and they are very much still in use in the US. You can see where and how they're in use at TSA Status [tsastatus.net].

I'm glad they've gotten rid of the potentially harmful ones (although I gather the risk is very low); but my primary complaints have always been the gross violation of privacy, ineffectiveness, and government fraud and waste related to the program.

I know of civilian workers at a state hospital (basically the only real employer in town) that are forced thru scanning machines at the beginning and end of their shifts, treated no differently than criminals. It wouldn't surprise me if these kind of machines are being used - and the images of the women surreptitiously recorded by the pigs that man them (not to mention the long-term health effects of the daily cooking sessions).

Few people are more hated in Red States than public employees just trying to e